Female-to-male sex conversion in Ceratitis capitata by CRISPR/Cas9 HDR-induced point mutations in the sex determination gene transformer-2.

ABSTRACT: The Sterile Insect Technique (SIT) is based on the mass release of sterilized male insects to reduce the pest population size via infertile mating. Critical for all SIT programs is a conditional sexing strain to enable the cost-effective production of male-only populations. Compared to current female-elimination strategies based on killing or sex sorting, generating male-only offspring via sex conversion would be economically beneficial by doubling the male output. Temperature-sensitive mutations known from the D. melanogaster transformer-2 gene (tra2^ts) induce sex conversion at restrictive temperatures, while regular breeding of mutant strains is possible at permissive temperatures. Since tra2 is a conserved sex determination gene in many Diptera, including the major agricultur

SUBMITTER: Aumann RA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7596080 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature